[SimCity News] - Game Update #2 is released! Im not able to try this myself just yet, Ill probably be able to once I get home. You can now pickup the new update for Societies which includes three new strategic modes (Basic, Hardcore and Nightmare) as well as many bug fixes. The file is huge, clocking in at 51 MB. You can pick it up on our Societies Patches page or download directly from here. ====================================================== You guys let me know how this turns out and what else it fixes. At this time, nothing is posted at Tilted Mills (except a link in the forum that someone found) or at the official site about what else this patch contains.
Josh, can you please re-edit the "here" URL in my post to http://simcitysocieties.ea.com/updates/details.php?&languageCode=1 Oh, and delete the line "At this time, nothing is posted at Tilted Mills (except a link in the forum that someone found) or at the official site about what else this patch contains. " It is now posted on the official site. Thanks!
Full list of changes: Strategic Mode Three Strategic Modes of play have been introduced, to complement the original three Creative Modes of play. Each of these Strategic Modes (Basic, Hardcore and Nightmare), is progressively more challenging than the preceding one, and all three introduce a variety of challenges not present in the Creative Modes of play: Buildings carry an ongoing maintenance cost. If maintenance requirements are not met, buildings have a chance of taking damage which will put them out of commission for several days or even result in destruction. Recycle gains are reduced, making shrewd planning critical Work and visit durations are lengthened. As a result, Sims can go to fewer places in a single day. An unhappy population will produce more detrimental Special Sims, including hippies and criminals. Rogue Sims get less satisfaction from shutting down buildings. Achievements and monuments must be earned separately for each strategic mode. You may only use monuments youve unlocked in this mode (or a harder one). Hardcore and Nightmare Modes must be unlocked by winning the Jack of All Trades trophy in the preceding Strategic Mode (success in Basic Strategic unlocks Hardcore; success in Hardcore unlocks Nightmare). Other than the Jack of All Trades achievement, which is always available, you can only earn one achievement per city in strategic play. General Enhancements The user interface can now change with your society. Look for altered UI appearances in Capitalist, Cyberpunk, Industrial, and Orwellian cities. Modders can use this added functionality to make more radical changes. Modding Several XMLs that werent additive now are. Particularly, custom textures dont all have to live in the same file, so multiple mods with custom textures should play together more nicely. All attributes of a building XML in the mod folder now take priority over the original, so mods can meddle with all aspects of existing buildings. The camera settings XML has been moved into its own folder so that it can be modded. New versions of packages with the same names as old packages now overwrite the old package when installed. Building textures can be modified directly from the building xml. No more need to use the custom profile textures. General Fixes The intended cap on the number of subways and bus stops in a city was not previously operating properly; this has been fixed. There can now be only 50 of each in a given city. New base models have been added to some buildings to address some cases where the terrain would appear over the base. Fix for Sims temporarily disappearing if they arrived for work early. The error message you get when your graphics card or drivers dont meet the minimum requirements is now more helpful. Stability and Performance Fix for a rare crash which could happen on removal of a cultural prop. Streaming textures provide improved performance and lower memory usage, particularly in large cities. Many general improvements to Sim AI performance. Fix for a lock-up (which could sometimes lead to a crash) involving pathfinding and public transit. Fix for memory overwrites (which could sometimes lead to a crash) involving Sim and building selection, building scripts, and the lighting system. Saving takes much less additional memory. This should solve the out-of-memory errors during autosaves that some users were experiencing. Fix for a crash on exit. Also includes Game Update #1 No need to install Game Update #1 if you havent yet; the improvements and content from Game Update #1 are included in Game Update #2.
